Eye for an eye will make Nige­ria blind — Atiku

Ex- Vice Pres­i­dent Atiku Abubakar yes­ter­day con­demned youths from the North and South who were is­su­ing quit notices and counter quit notices to fel­low Nige­ri­ans in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try, say­ing they were mis­guided.

In a state­ment by his me­dia of­fice, Atiku said re­tal­ia­tory quit notices will only make Nige­ria a blind na­tion.

He there­fore re­it­er­ated his call for the re­struc­tur­ing of the coun­try that will place pre­mium on state res­i­dency, as done in the United Arab Emi­rates.

“Just as I strongly con­demned the quit no­tice on peo­ple of the Igbo eth­nic stock liv­ing in North­ern Nige­ria and the counter quit notices that en­sued, I also ve­he­mently con­demn the re­tal­ia­tory quit no­tice given by cer­tain el­e­ments in other parts of Nige­ria to per­sons of other ori­gins be they North­ern, Yoruba or any other eth­nic group­ing within our na­tion.

“First and fore­most, it is a fal­lacy to be­lieve that there are peo­ple of North­ern or South­ern ori­gin. Nige­ria only has peo­ple of one ori­gin. We are all of Nige­rian ori­gin.

“As Nige­ri­ans, we must be prag­matic enough to re­alise the ob­vi­ous truth that an eye for an eye will leave Nige­ria blind.

“Let me at this junc­ture re­mind these “quit no­ticers” that when broth­ers fight to the death over a do­mes­tic dis­pute, it is their neigh­bours that even­tu­ally end up in­her­it­ing their fa­ther’s prop­erty,” the state­ment said.